EPrints Bazaar

EPrints includes GUI tools for creating new Bazaar packages and selecting the source files.

As part of this change a new system-level lib/plugins directory has been added allowing extensions to be installed globally. This reflects how mod_perl works, which has a single namespace for all repositories. By default plugins installed in lib/plugins will be disabled and hence can be enabled on a per-repository basis.

Search engine plugins

Searches are now executed through the plugins layer with a new Search plugin type. EPrints 3.3 comes with support for one new search engine: Xapian. Xapian is a probabilistic search engine that supports boolean queries. To use Xapian you must install the Search::Xapian Perl library and a perform a full re-index. The Xapian index will be written to archives/[repoid]/var/xapian/.

The (default) Internal search engine plugin has support for prefixed terms in simple search e.g. "title:(american eagle) birds". This allows users to specify more complex search queries in a similar fashion to e.g. Google. The available prefixes are based on the field id listed in the simple search configuration.

XSLT-based Imports, Exports and Citation Styles

If XML::LibXSLT is installed import and export plugins and citation styles can now be written using the XSLT language (XML stylesheets). XSLT export plugins support "templating" to add headers and footers to the export.

Flexible object support

EPrints already has a very flexible metadata scheme basic on primitive types (ints, dates etc.). In 3.3 this flexibility is enhanced by allowing the easy creation of user-defined dataset classes. Objects in these flexible datasets can be browsed, searched and viewed in a similar way to eprints or users. They may also be referred to by existing objects (item-referencing) or behave as a child-parent (as documents are to eprints).

SWORD 2.0/CRUD support

Improved workflow and document management

AJAX-based upload, deletion and updates of documents. Files now upload automatically and have a progress bar that works in all current browsers.

Document "actions" are now individual plugins allowing extensions to add actions to individual documents in the workflow. Supplied actions include conversion, unpacking (.zip and .tar.gz), additional files and metadata extraction.

Import workflows

Import plugins can now have a sibling Screen plugin that provides the interface for using that importer.

Upgrade Notes

Backup your database before installing this update. While upgrading has been tested you should always backup your repository before installing updates that change your database schema.

This is a new branch release that will make significant changes to your repository's database and configuration. Upgrading repositories may require fixes to appearance and/or configuration to continue working.